


Now, Voyager

by glorious_clio



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Gen, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 07:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15601380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_clio/pseuds/glorious_clio
Summary: Make no mistake, Leia Organa is driven by duty, by a desire for peace and democracy. So when she is shown a way to bring peace to the Galaxy, she sets herself on that path. It’s what she’s always done.And she’s already planted the seeds of her legacy. The Force will take care of the rest.





	Now, Voyager

**Author's Note:**

> Lucasfilm announced how they decided to work with unused footage to create Leia in IX. I think this is beautiful, and I’m sure they’ll do their absolute best. But I realized what I was looking for as I read the announcement, and this is the result. (I also threw a lot more of my headcanons in here, but hopefully nothing too jarring.) Unbeta’d and unabashed about my love for my favorite character. 
> 
> The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,  
> Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.  
> -Walt Whitman, “The Untold Want”

 

 _“Daughter of Skywalker,”_ said the Force.

“No,” she told it.

It had been a long time since she had last felt it. When Ben had turned, it had flared through her, reminding her that she had the power to tear the galaxy apart to put her family back together. Her response had been, “I know, but I won’t.” She had tamped down her emotions to an ember.

 _“It’s time,”_ the Force said again.

“Like hell it is.” She won’t give up the fight.

It felt different now. A flare again. But this felt blue, not the quick, red of the dark side. Blue was hotter, steadier. This was the side of the Force she had harnessed, oh countless times. Most recently to rescue herself from her son’s attack on her bridge. Well not him. One of his underlings, it had to be allowed. Same result.

Locked in the first mate’s cabin, she was still brushing off the salt from Crait, white and red all over. The _Falcon_ felt gritty under her fingertips. Every member of the resistance needed a shower, safety, a new base. Her mind was whirling. She needed to go back out among them.

“ _Amidala,”_ the Force said.

“What about her?” Leia had precious few memories of the woman, but she would not be manipulated.

“ _Bail and Breha_ ,” the Force whispered.

“Stop.”

The Force quieted to a hum in her head. Instead, she played Bail’s last words to her for the millionth time. Words of duty, of trust. The undercurrent of love, pride.

And then she felt her awareness shift, just a little. The way it sometimes did in a battle, and she could see everything spread out before her. Wider this time, encompassing the entire Galaxy, the outer rim, wild space-- and the Force, a voice, one she recognized. Obi-Wan had visited her once, early in her pregnancy: _“This is your duty too, Leia. One you have ignored for long enough. This is how you can save the Galaxy.”_

“Everything is going to change,” Leia said. As if everything hadn’t already changed a thousand times in her life, a thousand times in the past few days.

 _“You can’t stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting.”_ A woman’s voice this time.

She felt warm, suddenly. A good warmth. She looked again and the path before her was clear.

“Okay,” she said. “Give me a few days to see these people a little further. They deserve it.”

And the Force in her went quiet, banked back to its embers, hidden like Ahsoka Tano showed her a lifetime ago. The warmth stayed in her bones, and she went out to shore up the Resistance.

 

* * *

 

She left in an X-wing without telling anyone, and they spent those first few hours devastated. The General isn’t dead, it didn’t look like this was a suicide mission. She didn’t disable their tracker on the X-wing she swiped. But they couldn’t follow her through hyperspace like the First Order could. (Their slicers were already looking into preventing a repeat performance.) And anyway, she was a Skywalker who did training runs with Rogue Squadron, there was no way even Poe Dameron could catch her. Not now.

And then they begin comparing notes.

“ _No one person can win a war. It’s not about you, and it’s not about me,_ ” Leia told Poe.

The others looked to his command now. He felt the weight that she carried so long, and desperately wished he could send the entire fleet after her. But he was also sure she left for a reason, and there were better uses for their very limited resources.

Her first stops were where Alderaan used to be, Tatooine, back to Ahch To.  

 

 

 _“In the Beginning,”_ said the Force.

She left behind advanced navigation tools, beyond the charted Galaxy in the X-wing’s navicomputer. Leia could have taken the _Falcon_ , of course. It was hers as much as anybody’s. She could have at least copied the navicomputer in the _Falcon_ to Artoo, but she hadn’t wanted him, either.

The childhood she could have shared with her twin surrounded her as she rocketed back and forth across the Galaxy. She fueled anonymously at various outstations, no one taking any notice of an old woman in an unmarked flight suit. She’d taken a few credits and the few valuables she still possessed to barter with (most of it she left back on the _Falcon_ for Poe to find). She had a blaster and a few ration bars, her water canteen. She never knew where she was going until she got there, letting the Force guide her blindly.

Leia didn’t know what the Force was trying to teach her, but she was learning - Tatooine had thrown off the Hutts, but she had helped orchestrate that. Alderaan was still... well. But the meteors were.... Something that looked beautiful. But no beauty was worth the loss. And then to Ahch To.

With every step she took, the fire in her glowed a little more blue, and her veins ran hot when she laid her hands on a scorched tree.

 

 

 

 _“Hope is a double sided, with leadership on one edge, strategy on the other. Leadership is about setting an example. Strategy is about finding a path forward,”_ Leia told Finn.

The others looked to him for information, for plans, for a path forward. Finn had given them the intel on the First Order, had helped figure out a way to splice back into the First Order. He felt as if he’d taken up a mantle of leadership he wasn’t ready for. But one thing he was sure about, Leia Organa had not abandoned them, just as he had not abandoned Rey. For now, they’d have to find a different path.

They visually followed her progress to the Degobah system.  Finn wondered if there was a pattern here, one only she knew.

 

 _“I turn_ ,” said the Force.

Leia Organa was the daughter of four parents.

She knelt outside the entrance of a tiny hut. The arch of the passage felt warm under her touch. But she didn’t feel called to go inside. The Force didn’t need to tell her who had lived her before. Yoda. She saw the fleeting signature of him once, at an Ewok party.

She explored the swampy marsh, a cave where the cold of it could not touch her. She walked carefully, so not to step on any life accidentally. She thought of Bail and Breha, of Anakin and Padmé. In one way or another, she carried them all here.  

And Luke, oh Luke. He was _everywhere_ here, more so than Ahch To, or even Tatooine. It was here he wrestled with the knowledge of his paternity, his sister. Hard truths, hard lessons, they left traces in the humidity.

When the rain came, she let it soak into her skin.

 

 

 

 

 _“We all have stories that bring us to the Resistance, and it is this diversity of stories and backgrounds that is our strength,“_ Leia told Rose.

She felt the bite of the loss of her sister, even now. Most of the Resistance had been obliterated by the First Order, but it was Paige’s loss she felt most keenly.

Rose wasn’t the only one to lose a loved one in the past... had it only been a few standard months? And now Leia, who could never be defined by her losses but only her victories (and yet) was farther and farther away from them then ever. Poe refused to look for her, Finn insisted there was a deeper purpose to her mission, even though none of them, not even Rey, could guess where she was going next.

And Rose, Rose thought of it as a story, of a champion going out to meet a larger danger. It was a narrative that she was already working into her recruitment plans.

 

 _“I rise,”_ said the Force.

Atollon surprised her. She was drawn like a magnet to what remained of the Rebel base there, ripped apart by a force larger than the Empire.

The dust was thick beneath her feet as she wandered the wastes.

“Who goes there?” a voice asked, both the Force and not the Force. As far as she could tell there was no manifestation.

“Leia,” she told it. “And you?” she asked.

It didn’t reply, but the Force in her body said a word she didn’t recognize.

_“Bendu.”_

Whatever that meant. It didn’t matter - Atollon felt balanced, Leia felt no need to linger.

She moved onto Lothal proper, not too far away. She’d been here before, a senatorial aide to her father, a blossoming member of the Alliance. It felt different this time. But Leia wasn’t here to trace her footsteps.

As balanced as the wastes of Atollon felt, Lothal’s prairies felt like peace.

She followed the Force to a temple, used for target practice by the Empire, their attempts to crack it like a nut had merely scratched the surface. She followed the destruction to a mural: an old man and a younger one, and a young woman.

Leia touched the hand of the woman and left without attempting to open the temple. A wolf howled in the distance, and the warmth of the Force passed through her.  

The hand that had touched the mural tingled as Leia set a new course.

 

 

 

 

 _“The Force is not neutral, it wants to be a tool of creation. Don’t wield it as a weapon,“_ Leia told Rey.

She felt the same sense of purpose and peace in Leia’s departure as she had felt in Luke’s death. So while she grieved the loss the same as everyone, as she followed Leia’s path with interest, Rey was certain that the Force was guiding Leia Organa as it now guided her.

Most of her energy went to building her new lightsaber, using the crystal Leia had pulled out of the old emitter. She flipped through the old texts she stole. And she listened. Rey listened to Poe and Finn and Rose. She listened to Connix and D’Acy, Chewbacca and Nien Nunb.

And she listened to the Force, determined to use it with the same peace and purpose as Luke and Leia had shown.

 

 _“I renew,”_ said the Force.

Leia Organa crossed smoothly into wild space, not even static feedback from the X-wing to cause a blip. The Force guided her to a planet where the seasons seemed to change by the hour.

 _"Mortis,"_ said the Force.

It was so loud here, it hummed through her blood, the planet itself seemed a conduit for the power she felt all her life. She was never cold, not even in the wintery nights as she explored. There was life everywhere, but no fauna, no sentients.

There were scars that felt dark and cold, even to her touch.

And then there was a grave, blue, marked with the same face she had seen on the Lothali temple.

Leia reached down and touched the hand, warm again under her fingers.

 _“Daughter_ ,” the Force named her.

And Leia, the daughter of four, flinched back. “No.”

 _“So be it,”_ said the Force. _“Listen well.”_

She closed her eyes and felt the Force warm her, direct her. After a time (moments? seasons? years?), she turned, and made her way back to her X-wing. She calmly went through the pre-flight checks. She disabled her tracker without regret. And then, left the atmosphere as simply as taking a breath. Leia went further into the wildness of space, guided by the warmth in her heart.

Beyond.

Outside known space, outside wild space, even. Outside time itself. Unafraid and guided by her sense of duty and her reliance in the Force, hot and bright and flooding her veins.

  
_She was luminous and forever._


End file.
